To hear with the collection : the contextualisation and recontextualisation of archived interviews

Primarily informed by the debates in archival sciences both concerning the limits and possibilities of the archive as a site of knowledge production and regarding how the archive in itself and the archivists contribute to the shaping of the narratives of history. As well as, the debates in oral history on the re-use of archived interviews, this article suggests a methodologyfor how to (re)contextualise interviews previously collected and archived. I stress the importanceof hearing with the archive and collection, and I demonstrate how we can do this bydeconstructing the semantic genealogy of oral history collections as a part of our need as(re)users to reflect on our own use and (re)contextualisation of previously collected material. Doing so will allow us not only to understand the voices and narratives of the archived interviewsbut also to hear the tacit narratives of the archives and collections